


Calamity From The Skies

by purglepurglepurgle



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Gardening, Gen, Midgar, Slice of Life, Tension, cactusverse, flowery prose for prose about flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:06:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24242524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purglepurglepurgle/pseuds/purglepurglepurgle
Summary: Another gardening fic. Aeris tries to save some plants; Tseng watches and comments. She'd rather he didn't. Goes with 'Cactus' and 'Buddleja'. Set at some point not too long before the original game.
Relationships: Aeris & Tseng
Comments: 12
Kudos: 23





	Calamity From The Skies

Aeris kneels, leaning over the edge of the bathtub, marigold plant in hand. The other five pots sit at the far end of the bath. She turns on the tap and holds the plant under, rinsing the bottoms of the leaves.

Spider mites. Tiny, crawling things with eight legs, that spin webs-- but they eat plants, not insects. Each smaller than a pinhead, they stick their teeth into anything they can find, puncture the fragile green veins, and suck out the nutrients, until every last leaf shrivels into dust. Then they web up the corpse in a wriggling mass.

Aeris remembers seeing the first couple of mites crawling along the first stem; she remembers thinking perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, or maybe even a good thing; perhaps they could help fertilise the plants, tracking pollen along on all their little feet-- but they're too greedy. She’s already had to throw two plants away (web-choked, _crawling_ ), and now, even her healthiest marigold leaves are speckled yellow; she's lost more than half the buds, all shrouded in webbing, and if she doesn't do _something_ , the mites will swarm the lot. So she's pouring water over the plants, having paid two days’ wages to use sector 5's communal bathtub for the task; she's hoping to wash away as many mites as possible. Once she's finished rinsing, she picks up a wad of tissue, and wipes down the underside of each leaf. It's hard on her back, bending over the tub like this, and it hurts to see the tissue come away green. The plant's lifeblood, dripping out through all the tiny cuts the mites have left...

"All those innocent insects dying," says Tseng, from the doorway. "Not very in-tune with the planet."

"They'll kill the plants and then they won't have anything to eat anyway."

She keeps her back to him, but she hears his lips curl. His teeth will be glinting in the corners of his mouth.

"Preventing them from overgrazing? How noble."

She moves too fast; she knocks her hand on the side of the tub. Pain flares. She shouldn't've let him drag her into justifying herself. He's just trying to get a reaction, because he's a bored, boring, petty man doing a job he hates because he's not smart enough to find himself anything better. She goes back to wiping the leaves.

He continues to needle her. "And here I thought it was just about keeping your flowers pretty. Do you intend to be a ranger when you're all grown up?"

She ignores him, this time. Though it reminds her how she can't leave Midgar, can't get away from Shinra, will probably never walk on sky-grass again. Her mother used to murmur her stories about a forest, with vines strong enough to braid into ladders, with flowers taller than trees. Sunlight scattered through petals, prismatic. Aeris picks up the next pot. Six plantpots in a bathtub; this is the closest she'll get. She's got to keep them green.

Maybe Tseng notices something from her manner, the stiffness in her arms, because there's a pause, and when he speaks again, he's changed tack.

"How long is this going to take?" Footsteps. He leans over her shoulder. "If you don't hurry up, I'll have to smoke indoors."

"I want to get all the leaves."

Tseng grumbles, low in his throat. "Can't you use your Ancient powers for this?"

"I'm not an Ancient." She remembers all the other times she's said it. She focuses harder on the plant. Wet mud trickles down the drain.

Tseng glides back and leans against the towel rack, watching as she wipes the undersides of yet more leaves. "It's not going to work. There'll be a million more mites by tomorrow. If you're going to do something like this, you have to kill the lot."

Aeris ignores him.

"You could spray them with soap. Poison the mites. It'd be faster."

"No," says Aeris. Something in her tone gives her away.

"I don't _believe_ you-- you don't want to _hurt_ them!" He’s delighted.

"Of course I don't want to hurt them!" Aeris scrubs harder, accidentally, and almost pulls off a leaf. She makes herself stop, then continues, with more control, trying to ignore the salivating glee in his voice. "If they eat soap, it dissolves them from the inside. It's horrible."

"Aeris," says Tseng, voice still fanged, and she hears the click of his lighter, "You do realise you're drowning them? Crushing them? Destroying their homes, their families-- I can't believe I'm talking about spider mites like this, but-- it makes absolutely no difference whether you use soap at this point. You're, you're _God_ to them. A wrathful god. A vicious, wrathful god in a pink dress and pigtails--"

"Oh, shut up!" Aeris slams the pot down. Once upon a time, she lived in the Shinra Building, and she still remembers the rats in glass tanks, feeding tubes bubbling, intestines exposed and covered in slime. She picks up another wad of tissue. "It may not be a big difference, but it _is_ a difference--"

"Yeah, the difference between taking two hours and taking two minutes--"

"And they're not actually pigtails." The moment it's out of her mouth, she regrets it. It sounds like the kind of argument she'd've picked when she was about eight years old and he'd denied her a trip to the playpark. She elaborates, trying to make it sound less stupid, though she swears she can smell the mockery in the cigarette smoke. "It'd be pigtails if I had all my hair in the braids, but it's just the part at the front. I don't know what they’re called, but they’re not pigtails."

"You're a font of information," says Tseng. "Hurry up." The lighter clicks a few more times. "Or we'll find out how those mites react to fire."

**Author's Note:**

> Learned while writing this fic: Aeris' house has no bathroom.


End file.
